"What was that about?" Theo asked later in the privacy of the Slytherin Common Room. As Sixth Years they had to defer only to the Sevenths, who were either at Quidditch practise or immured in the Library. They had their choice of seating, which for their tete-a-tete was two wingback chairs in the corner with the Safavid carpet. It was a beautiful piece with flowers and arabesques in silver, browns, and subtle greens. Hermione nudged off her shoes before sinking her toes in the wool pile.

"Muggle politics." She didn't particularly want to discuss it, feeling that she would be giving ammunition to someone who already thought Muggles were bestial.

"I got that far." He sat and stretched out his legs, adjusting the ottoman with a flick of his wand. "What is a prod in that context?"

"A Protestant." Hermione supplied, settling back into her chair. She rubbed her stockinged feet across the rug, a shiver tingling up her spine at the sensation on her soles. "The siblings are Roman Catholics. It's an old argument stemming I think from Cromwell's invasion of Ireland in seventeenth century. There were wars before that but more about land than religion."

"The Lord Protector." Theo had only heard of one Cromwell in the course of his historical studies. A religious fanatic, a puritan who had been a significant threat to the magical communities of Britain. He'd razed ancient groves in Scotland to make siegeworks. "The Muggles are still fighting that war?"

"In fits and starts. There was a flare up in the Sixties that's continued until now. Bombs, marches, and walled neighbourhoods. It's all rather depressing." She'd been old enough to remember watching news footage of Lockerbie, which had been Libyan not Irish terrorism, and asking her parents why people did that. They hadn't had a good answer. The rash of bombings in the summer of 1990 had frightened her. So she had read.

"How do you know all this?" He doubted Muggle Studies covered current politics. Too useful an application for the filler class.

"Muggles publish books, Theo." Hermione snapped, his sceptical tone irking her. "They have libraries. It's not difficult if you make the effort." She reined in her temper. "Their history runs parallel to ours, adding context. Binns cherry-picks dates without any grounding. Want to know why the Ministry was so frantic to sign the International Statute of Secrecy? Look up the Glorious Revolution."

"You needn't rant at me." If it were up to him, he'd have Binns exorcised or bound to an empty classroom to drone without an audience. Surely there was a half-blood somewhere competent to teach a well-rounded History of Magic curriculum. "I want to know these things. Limiting our scholarship because of Ministry histrionics is foolish."

"You'd learn mundane history?" She couldn't hide her surprise.

"I'd learn anything." Theo said with fervour. "No knowledge is wasted, whatever the source."

Hermione muttered an agreement and changed the subject. She couldn't decide whether Nott's desire to broaden his mind was ominous. The Knights of Walpurgis had started as a fraternity keen to explore the reaches of magic. Or she could give the boy the benefit of the doubt and not assume his intellect would take him down Dark paths. It was hypocritical of her. She was the one making potion grenades.

The rest of the first term passed quietly. Hermione kept entirely removed from the Golden Trio as they clung to normality and from Malfoy, who withdrew further. She got an astounding amount of work done. Slughorn signed a permission slip for the Restricted Section after some of the old oil. He might not think her a good mentee with her Death Eater connections but he was prepared to encourage a potential Healer.

Zabini swanked about the Christmas Party, rubbing it in the noses of the Sacred Twenty-Eight heirs not invited. The Carrow twins were smug too, insulated from the calumny of Alecto and Amycus by their father's public repudiation of his cousins. Lycus Carrow knew when to cut his losses. Hermione wasn't sure how or if he'd survived the second war. She expected she would find out next year.

She left Zabini to his gloating to get some brewing done. Things were going well. This autumn's Dittany crop had been bountiful, emphasising how much she had harvested last year under Umbridge. Moppet was having a lovely time learning freezing charms and the Reductor Curse. Wand casting exhausted the house elf far faster than her natural magic but her precision with the spells was impressive, more than good enough to powder ingredients for potions.

"Is Miss going to that boy's house to Yule?" Moppet asked from somewhere in a cloud of dust. Hermione carefully cleaned her up with a siphoning charm, sending the fine limestone powder into canisters for later use, and temporarily putting off answering her question. "Miss will say to Moppet what she does."

"I can't think of a way to avoid it." Her sporadic letters to Esne had barely been enough to keep the edge off Madam Rosier's fears. The woman wouldn't last a whole school year without seeing her granddaughter. "I thought I could plead the lack of a public chaperone." Using the ridiculous pure-blood conventions had been a convenient excuse. "Unfortunately Theo thought of that and invited the Radnotts to stay for the holiday. Their son isn't coming home for the season. He's avoiding the war by staying in the Seychelles."

"Is he a bad wizard?" The house elf's hand tightened on her wand. If they hurt her witch, she was going to make all the bad witches and wizards into tiny tiny bits.

"He sounds extremely sensible." Hermione grumbled. After the run-in he'd had with the Ministry, Algernon had gone on a Grand Tour. He'd fallen in love with an African witch, followed her home, and decided he'd much rather have tropical beaches than English drizzle. "His wife teaches at the local campus of the Merge School of Under-Water Spellage and he writes monographs on magical sea life."

"You could say no." Moppet suggested staunchly.

"I could. Cathal wouldn't, though." She made a face. "Siglinde's not sane. I don't think it'd take much for her to convince herself I was being held prisoner here and come storm the Castle." Hermione knotted her fingers in her hair, yanking on her braid as though she wanted to throttle someone with it. "I don't want to press the issue or provoke her."

The house elf scowled and muttered but when their work time was over, she hugged Hermione fiercely. The witch returned the embrace with equal affection. She really did not want to go to Nott's house for the holidays but she was stuck until she was seventeen and could claim Rosier Hall outright. The Ministry couldn't keep the estate 'in trust' any longer without charging her with some crime. She rather expected with the change of government she would have no trouble taking up residence before she came of age.

Glumly, Hermione went to the Slytherin dormitory. The four other girls were tucked up but awake. Millicent and Tracey were reading. Greengrass had a mirror in front of her and was trying out cosmetic charms. Parkinson was doing her nails, comparing them to a swatch of fabric, then redoing them. Hermione took her pyjamas into the bathroom, showered, dried her hair, and dressed for bed. When she returned, Bulstrode had Greengrass pinned on the floor, Parkinson's bed was on fire, and Davis was shooting hexes at the black haired witch from behind a barricade of trunks.

Hermione knew which side she was on. She Stunned Parkinson, extinguished the fire, and shouted at Millicent to stop before the sturdy girl thumped Greengrass's face into the rug again. She'd like to join in but being a Prefect meant she had to be the voice of reason and restraint. The two half-bloods collected themselves. Hermione Stunned Greengrass then rolled her into the First Aid recovery position.

"Some context please?" She asked. Daphne's pert nose was bloodied but not broken. A healing charm took care of the damage. Her face would be a bit sore in the morning, no swelling or discolouration though.

"Yule." Millicent replied tightly. Cathal looked blank. "The seasonal rites."

"Raised in a cottage then orphaned." Hermione played the complete social ignorance card, crossing her fingers it would be enough. She knew about the old magical festivals but she had never participated in them. The Weasleys either didn't celebrate the rituals or hadn't invited her to participate. "Foreign mother."

"Sorry, of course, your rites would be different." Bulstrode looked contrite. She hadn't expected to have to spell out the cause of her anger to a pure-blood. "The old families all send each other a stave or branch of ash wood so we can bind them together for the hearth fire on the longest night. It's not quite a loyalty oath but it's serious. If you're included, you're part of the community. If you're not, well, you're literally out in the cold."

"With you so far." The Muggle-born did not sigh, smile, or smirk. She did not roll her eyes at the young women fighting over firewood. She did not comment on the Yule log or remark that a bundle of sticks was a fasces, the root of the word fascist. Cathal would not have mocked this tradition so Hermione held her tongue.

"The Greengrasses and the Parkinsons returned the branches my family sent them. Broken." Millicent ground the words out. She was embarrassed she had lost control in reacting to the girls' sneers but it hurt. No one wanted to be an outcast. "The official word is it's because of my father's conduct. Divorcing two wives leaves him open to allegations of oath-breaking."

"To lose one wife may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness." Hermione paraphrased Oscar Wilde. Bulstrode and Davis clearly recognised it as a quote but didn't seem to know the source. A bitter nod and a wry shrug greeted her comment.

"It's really because the Bulstrode heir is a half-blood. They want to be pure, to protect themselves from You-Know-Who." She was upset about her parents' divorce. It wasn't finalised yet, just inevitable. Her mother would get a good settlement and access to her children, all stipulated in her marriage contract, but it would be a big step down for her socially. "I thought my father would be able to keep in enough to avoid us being singled out. It's not safe to be noticed, you know?"

"I know." Cathal, daughter and granddaughter of Death Eaters, knew completely.

"Of course you do." Millicent shifted uncomfortably. She'd forgotten in the rush of anger and hurt that Rosier was even closer to Voldemort's inner circle than the two Stunned bitches. "It's not that we're not loyal." She said hastily. "Muggles are awful and Muggle-borns just don't understand but..." By force of will, the witch halted her babbling before she said 'I'm frightened'. "Amalric is eleven. He's a child. If anything happens to our father, the House of Bulstrode will be in a bad way."

"If the insult is serious enough that you were making Greengrass kiss the rug, I think your father should parley it into a full retreat." How much could she say? Not enough, probably. Hermione tried to sound like Cathal and Cathal tried to sound cunning. "In the wake of the debacle at the Ministry, there's a lot of jockeying for position going on. This may be the last clean moment to withdraw. Leave the broken branches on your threshold and move."

"Why do you want the Bulstrodes out of the way?" Tracey asked because if they were being honest she had little to lose. She'd hexed Parkinson, and enjoyed it, but she didn't have a dog in this fight. Neither side wanted a half-blood Slytherin with no political connections.

"I want to limit the collateral damage." Hermione said candidly then added more adroitly. "A surgical coup is far better than a free-for-all. I have no problem with people sensibly disengaging. When the war is over, the moderates can return and we can all be civilised again."

The young women stared at her, assessing and hesitant. Rosier was clever and violent, quiet and angry. Could they believe she had insider knowledge of the approaching conflict? Oh yes, certainly, they could. Her skirmishing with Malfoy and apparent alliance with Nott might well mirror the manoeuvring of the elders of those names.

It was a very thoughtful duo who tidied up their dorm while Cathal levitated the Stunned pair into their beds. She took their wands to Professor Snape, the usual protocol for intra-House disputes. Slytherins were obsessive about keeping their quarrels out of sight. Hermione doubted anything would be done to punish anyone involved. Discreet did not mean just.

The ride to Platform 9¾ was boisterous but Hermione wasn't feeling the holiday season. It was the day of the winter solstice. There inevitably would be a ceremony that night, the shortest night. Neither she nor Theo had heard anything definitive on whether they would be invited, compelled, to attend the rite at Malfoy Manor. The Dark Lord would be avid to celebrate the darkest time of the year.

She patrolled the train, noted the disposition of the Aurors, swapped the duty with MacMillan, and sat in a closed carriage with Nott, Bulstrode, Davis, and the Carrows going over spell theory for duelling. Some charms and hexes 'flowed on' well together, though which ones varied caster to caster. They flicked through records of the All-England Wizarding Duelling Competition, which listed the spells used by the winners in each category.

The trial and error was sufficiently fiddly that Hermione distracted herself almost completely until they pulled into King's Cross station. Tracey said good-bye before veering off into the scrum to catch another train. The twins' mother was there to collect them, walking with the group to the Georgian house. The Slytherins limited themselves to conventional good-wishing and farewells before Flooing to their respective homes.

The Radnotts would arrive tomorrow but Siglinde Rosier was there waiting when Hermione stepped out of the hearth. She didn't say anything, just drew a long shuddering breath and gave her granddaughter a nod, feigning calm. It seemed as though all was well. But she was in every room Hermione visited for longer than five minutes and watched from the windows when the younger witch went outside.

The other shoe dropped when they were summoned to Malfoy Manor an hour before midnight. Theo had planned a small ritual of wassail and candles, suitable for the bereft, and a feast because the house elves refused not to set out platters of fruit cake and roast meats. He had sent the ash staves to the customary allies of the House of Nott and had kindled his own Yule bundle at sunset. All was well until Madam Rosier's Dark Mark burned.

The matron left and returned rapidly. On her reappearance, her face was as fixed and white as marble. It took her several moments before she could find words, so long in fact Theo thought she was about to faint and offered her an arm. Hermione poured her grandmother a tankard of the mulled cider thinking the heat if not the alcohol might revive her. Siglinde stood rigid as she gulped down a mouthful, speaking at last once she had swallowed.

"The Dark Lord requests your presence." Each syllable was carefully enunciated as though each demanded to be heard individually. "The Malfoys delight in inviting Master Theodore Nott and Miss Cathal Rosier to their solstice ritual." That came out high, a meaningless pleasantry. The Malfoys' delight at the attendance of two teenagers at the cusp of the long night was certainly not their own.

Hurrying upstairs to change into something formal, Hermione grabbed the Renaissance gown with the illusory serpents because there was no such thing as being seen as too loyal to the iconography. Oh bloody fuck she was going to die. The insane snake-faced murdering bastard was going to crack her skull, devour her secrets, and kill her slowly.

Her mind full of fear, corpse green light, and memento mori, Cathal's hands clumsily guided themselves to dress her body. Cathal's feet took her body downstairs to the Floo. Theo was already there in dress robes, the trousers tucked into boots to hide the too-short hems. He was wearing the same set his father had bought him for Fourth Year, still a reasonable fit to his chagrin. He'd grown up but not out, a lack his elves were determined to remedy with pie.

By the hearth, he offered his arm to Madam Rosier. She waved off his gallantry with a sharp twitch, her hands going to her wand in a decorative sheath at her waist more like a chatelaine than a scabbard. She wasn't garbed for war but Theo couldn't shake the impression that was for what she was gearing.

He gave his arm to Cathal, whose hands were cold. She had the same look as her grandmother with eyes staring into the distance. Did they know something he didn't? Theo did not ask before they stepped through the flames to Malfoy Manor and when they were greeted by the lady of the House he limited himself to the conventional. He could smell the blood already.

The sacrifice was a stag. The animal hung from its back legs, suspended from the ceiling in the ballroom. It swayed under its own weight, spattering red around the vessel set beneath it to catch the blood from its cut throat. A bit gruesome, Theo thought as they were escorted across the parquetry to join the circle, each before a candle twisted around with a wreath of pine and ivy, but not beyond the pale.

Then the stag's head swung, antlers dragging close enough to the vessel to tip it, and brushed right through it. He stared as the illusion faded washing out to a ghostly sketch over the body of a well-built man with long fair hair. His breath caught as for a moment he thought the sacrifice was Lucius Malfoy before telling himself the Malfoy patriarch was in Azkaban. He kept looking drawn entirely to the spectacle of the person dangling from the ceiling rose; a macabre chandelier.

"Who is he?" Theo flinched when he heard his own murmur. He shouldn't have said anything. Looking around the circle Yaxley was implacable, Vincent and Gregory excited, Draco whey-faced, and Madam Malfoy meticulously expressionless.

"Sturgis Podmore." Cathal said remotely. Theo looked back to the dead man's congested face streaked with his lifeblood and wasn't sure knowing his name didn't make it worse.

Severus Snape swept into the room, taking the place beside Theo opposite his godson. A few moments later Bellatrix Lestrange entered and stood a space to the right of Narcissa Malfoy. There was a pause, a silence, a stillness before the Dark Lord entered the chamber. His gaze scythed across the company. The Death Eaters lowered their heads. The unMarked copied the gesture of obeisance a beat later.

A ritual happened. Afterwards Hermione was hard-pressed to describe it. There was chanting and old magic; a feeling of something rising from deep beneath the earth to swirl around them. The body was entirely consumed by the energy leaving only the red droplets on the wooden floor. They shared a chalice of mulled wine with a salty, metallic aftertaste she found distressingly easy to identify. Throughout, Hermione concentrated on thinking nothing, feeling nothing, being only the hollow shell that was Cathal.

When the magic settled and the candles were extinguished some semblance of normality returned. House elves appeared with canapés, dainty cuts of meat artfully arranged, still appropriate for the season albeit froufrou. The guests mingled. Siglinde Rosier remained resolutely at her granddaughter's side, an unnecessary diligence as Hermione had no intention of leaving her protection.

She tried to memorise names and faces. Most were already known to her in passing at least. Gibbon turned out to be a brown haired man of middling height with an undershot jaw. Harper, father of the idiot Slytherin Seeker who'd replaced Malfoy, was tall and had a beaky nose in an otherwise handsome face. Lowe, nephew of the author of the Muggle Conspiracy and other racist propaganda, wore a pince-nez above a walrus moustache reminding Hermione of Groucho Marx.

What was it that Dumbledore had said? A motley of the weak, the ambitious, and the thuggish? She couldn't recall his exact words but the approximation felt right. The fear of change, of insecurity, and a romanticisation of the past. Hermione had seen that rose-coloured nostalgia more benevolently in the Radnotts. Here it was an intoxicant.

Bellatrix Lestrange approached almost skipping ahead of Voldemort, half-herald, half-jester. She said something to Madame Rosier that Hermione didn't hear over the roaring of her blood in her ears. No more than a pace separated them in this place where she had been tortured. She knew she should be panicking, her heart racing, except the adrenaline rush didn't come. Her body, this body, had no muscle memory of the Cruciatus. It was all literally in her head.

Tom Riddle greeted her grandmother with a good facsimile of old-fashioned manners. They were something he had learned to ape the pure-bloods and aired when it amused him, Hermione tried not to think. When the dry hand took hers the only reason she didn't flinch was her fixed concentration on her Occlumency. Voldemort said something. Siglinde answered for her swiftly and the Dark Lord moved on to Theodore Nott.

"Cissa wants her for Draco." Bellatrix said in a manic voice, snatching Cathal's long braid to tug on it like a bell rope. "She'll do, I suppose. If she's loyal." A sharp yank on her hair jerked her head up, their eyes meeting. "Are you loyal, little girl?"

"To my own." Hermione gritted her teeth and fought not to spit out all the hate and rage the mad witch engendered. Like a well-spring, it flooded up until she shook with the effort of holding back the tide.

"She's mine!" Siglinde hissed, knuckles white on her wand.

The moment wobbled, tipping close to spells flying, when the gyroscope of Bellatrix's madness suddenly spun in another direction. She giggled and released her hold on Cathal's hair, scampering away to rejoin her Master at heel. Hermione straightened as Madam Rosier grabbed a handful of hors d'oeuvres off a passing tray. Stuffing one into her mouth, she thrust another at her granddaughter.

"Eat." She ordered. "Make feast with the Malfoys so we may leave."

Hermione choked down the morsel and went willingly when Siglinde dragged her to the nearest Floo. They left without announcing their departure, without taking their leave of the Dark Lord. The consequences of their breach of etiquette didn't seem to bother the Death Eater. She hustled her heir upstairs to her suite then locked her in before Hermione could protest. Hearing through the door the witch screaming frenzy at the house elves, Hermione did not protest.